These images show the stunningly fast progress of self-driving cars

Team Ensco's autonomous vehicle malfunctions during DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004.
DARPA
We may not be zipping around in self-driving cars just yet, but the technology for autonomous vehicles has actually come a long way in the last decade.

When DARPA hosted its first driverless car competition in 2004, the possibility of self-driving cars ever becoming a reality looked bleak.

In fact, not one of the 15 teams that qualified for the final race finished the course and after just three hours into the 10-hour competition, only four cars remained operational.

While DARPA's first Grand Challenge competition was considered by some to be a failure, it did set in motion the whole idea of creating autonomous vehicles, and by the next Grand Challenge in 2005, five teams' vehicles successfully finished the 132 miles course.

By 2007, which was the last year the competition was hosted, six teams finished the course.

Since then, tech companies and automobile companies alike have been chasing the dream of bringing self-driving cars to market, and they have made a lot of progress.

SciAutonics II Team made it the second furthest but then ran into some trouble.

The self-driving dune buggy created by the team SciAutonics II, which was backed by several Southern California Aerospace firms, went a total of 6.7 miles before getting stuck in a embankment.

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Stanford’s team was the first ever to finish the course.

DARPA

Stanford's vehicle dubbed "Stanley" took first place in the 2005 Grand Challenge, finishing the 132 mile race in six hours and 54 minutes.

Stanford's racing team worked alongside Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory to create the vehicle, which featured five LIDAR lasers, a video camera, and a GPS system.

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In 2007, Carnegie Mellon worked with General Motors and Caterpillar to take first place.

DARPA

By the last DARPA Challenge, which was referred to as the Urban Challenge, the technology had advanced to the point that the vehicles now had to be able to operate in an urban environment. Previously, the race took place in the Mojave Desert. But in 2007, the event was at an Air Force base in southern California.

While the course was shorter at only 60 miles, the vehicles now had to obey all traffic laws, be able to merge into traffic, and avoid other obstacles.

Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing team finished the course in a little over four hours and took home the grand prize of $2 million.

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Google launched its self-driving car project in 2009 and the technology became a little more seamless.